Understand Andy Warhol (Andy Warhal) is completely impossible. He once went through a profound metamorphosis. It was in early childhood when he fell ill with scarlet fever. For a long time, the young Andrew Warhol, as he was then called, suffered from several symptoms resulting from a complication, and one of them was the dance of St. Vitus. Since the third grade, he was constantly sick, most spent time in bed. Gradually, the disease receded, but its course left traits in his personality that could not disappear and appeared not only in his youth, but also mature years. American artist Andy Warhol is a person known to such an extent that the special warehouse of his personality simply could not help but fall into the attention of various researchers. It has been repeatedly considered both from the side of art, and from the side of the psyche and nervous system, from the point of view of philosophy, from the position of business. Therefore, in our time it is no longer possible to make some sensational statement on his account. Whatever was said now, they said the same thing before. We only note that its non-standard, even otherness, can serve as an example of the fact that psychopathy can be brilliantly monetized. How did he succeed?
Completely professional commercial artist
Andy Warhol sometimes gives the impression of a mediocrity who, by some scandalous miracle, managed to get to Olympus American glory through the back door of artificially fabricated scandalousness. This is completely untrue. As a child, bedridden by illness, he cut out pictures from various magazines, made collages, which he painted. There were some kind of children's works. The main thing in them was that the boy liked it. This tendency for the predominance of the subjective over the generally accepted persisted throughout life. He likes the same thing as all people, but only he managed to turn the childish ecstasy of contemplating pictures from magazines, candy wrappers and soup cans into special kind existential art.
He barely graduated from high school general education school and entered the Carnegie Technical School, which at that time was not yet an institute, but was already one of the most prestigious educational institutions in the United States. In 1949, the artist received a bachelor's degree and began working in his specialty. He decorated windows, created various promotional materials and postcards, and then worked as an illustrator for popular publications such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and the like. In addition, the tutorial illustrates Spanish, which makes it one of the most popular textbooks of the time. So Andy Warhol never suffered from a lack of professionalism. As well as the commercial demand for his talent. If the work of Andy Warhol did not reach the rank of art, then he would still be one of the richest artists of his time. Suffice it to say that the design of the 1960 Coca-Cola cans is his work. So that works of art were created for the soul, or rather, because of the needs of the psyche.
Compensation for the lack of personal qualities as the basis of the creative process
The mystery of what Andy Warhol's paintings are is based on the type of pathology in his personality. Psychopathy is a deficient disorder: something is always missing - feelings, empathy, self-identification, which a person seeks to make up for. He wrote a lot about it, because he was drawn to writing activity, he even organized the magazine "Interview", on the pages of which interviews were published that the stars took from each other.
Once he saw a girl with pigmentation disorders. She attracted attention, he even followed her. And after only ten days - he began to have problems with pigmentation of the skin, hair, eyes. Hence the legendary silver hair color. From a medical point of view, this is a psychosomatic disorder. He then asked, in his own words, a medical student friend, and you can get infected with a pigmentation disorder visually, just by looking at another patient. It is not known what the student said to him. It is possible, if we are talking about a person with a special way of personality. He, like a sponge, absorbs the image, he has a huge receptacle of things in his mind, and he seeks to replicate them.
The Essentials of Andy Warhol's Life
Andy's biography is inseparable from three phenomena:
- pop art as a direction in art;
- the concept of mass production, when paintings are made in series. The workshop "Factory" became the pinnacle of practical implementation;
- philosophy of the universal man.
Pop art, of which he is considered the founder, in Andy's understanding, is an expression of momentary feelings that everything evokes - people, soup in cans, racing cars. To call it a glorification of packaging is to understand nothing about who the artist is and what his strange painting is.
Mass production of something in art is not a circulation with a loss of quality. Recall the engravings, which are also replicated. It's just that Andy fell for a purely childish idea of silk-screen printing, which in his imagination was associated with a photo. By type of character, he is a cunning complex of schizoid, hysteroid and evasive personality. From the schizoid in him, the main property is the ability to invent the world anew each time. So he came up with a technique for himself. Not a single photographer will say that Andy Warhol took some artistic photographs. He specifically chose the most massive, intended for dummies - the Polaroid camera, in those days - the very first modifications. The images were transferred onto a nylon mesh using contact illumination. Thus, a matrix was created, and on its basis a small edition of works of special art was produced.
homo universale
The philosophy of the universal man, or "homo universale", spun behind all this creative splendor. It is not a man, not a woman, not a thing, not a phenomenon, but always something more. In this way he reproduced his perception of the gestalt. It is characteristic that at one of the exhibitions, as an exhibit, he represented himself. And this should not be seen as an eccentricity. He really had no understanding of the clear human boundaries of personality, could treat himself as an object, even make a type of behavior out of it.
He was a homosexual who never hid it, but this does not mean at all that he needed sex with men. Rather, he strove for an exchange of energy and quite allowed platonic affection. Yes, he made friends with street artist, but it is impossible to say unequivocally that they were " sweet couple". Andy Warhol and Basquiat even organized a joint exhibition, which, although it was received with hostility by critics, meant a lot to Basquiat. But this does not mean anything, since Warhol's true lovers are known to everyone, but it is difficult to include Basquiat in this environment. Warhol erased the boundaries of personality along with John Giorno, Billy Name, Jed Johnson, John Gould and. Although the latter is not certain, it is possible that Keith and Andy's relationship was more platonic, although Keith himself never hid that he was a homosexual.
Style and works
Warhol's style of art is his own concept of pop art and art house. In cinema, he does the same thing as in painting. He is always pushing boundaries. Everyone knows this legendary can of Campbell's soup. It's very hard for critics to admit it, but Andy had no second meaning when he portrayed her and presented her to the audience. He sees her as a piece of gestalt. In psychology, it is more than the sum of things. If someone looks at the kitchen table, he sees not a table, a tablecloth and plates on it, but also his attitude to space and time. The table may be associated with something that is a source of comfort or discomfort. Andy is not smart with such designs, but simply draws a can of soup, which he actually likes. No one will be able to invent a kitchen, they won’t have time, the psyche is blinded by the label itself, the very image of the can. This, by the way, is the main force of the impact of commercial packaging. They work even before a person begins to think in qualitative terms.
200 one dollar bills, 1962
Banana, 1967
A can of Campbell's soup, 1962
Eight Elvises, 1963
Diptych Marilyn, 1962
Green bottles of Coca-Cola, 1962
Red Lenin, 1987
Pistol, 1981-1982
Statue of Liberty, 1986
Che Guevara, 1968
Queen Elizabeth II, 1985
Andy Warhol loved his work, but he loved himself more. This does not mean at all that he was a complete egoist. He helped those whom he considered worthy. Why? Because universal people are multifunctional. This is how he saw them, this is their difference from all other things. People are more things than things because they are people. They have the right to use objects of animate and inanimate nature as they please. That was his philosophy. And this is not a call for permissiveness at all. He himself did not like violence, so he considered violence unnatural for people and things. In general - a guy who likes jeans, who does not need to be explained that doing evil is evil, because it would be too difficult for him to do evil. This causes discomfort, and things and universal people should be in order. The iron logic of an autist, and it is impossible to find fault with it.
The public created a lot of noise around portraits of famous personalities, the image of Lenin on a red background, the diptych of Marilyn Monroe, which contains many portraits of her and created after the death of the actress, the painting "Pistol", whose title is misleading because it depicts a revolver. We can say with confidence that Andy simply did not cut off such subtleties. For him, it was much more important that the picture depicts a copy of the weapon from which one Valerie Solanas, a writer, screenwriter and radical feminist, was widely known in an extremely narrow circle before the assassination attempt and became a celebrity after it. This happened at the "Factory", which was an art workshop, a club, a film studio and sometimes a nativity scene. The result of the attempt was that he experienced great physical and moral suffering. Three bullets hit him in the stomach, one of those who constantly hung around at the "Factory" on business and idle was wounded. However, Andy did not file a lawsuit against Valerie. She was sentenced to three years and compulsory treatment in a psychiatric clinic.
Because of the assassination attempt, his health was seriously undermined, but there was no direct connection between him and death. Shots were fired in 1968, and death occurred in 1987, 19 years later. During these years, the artist continued to engage in creativity, in particular, he experimented with the coloring of a racing car, which was a dynamic work of art.
Andy Warhol died of cardiac arrest while at Cornwell Medical Center in Manhattan, where he underwent surgery to remove his gallbladder. In the last years before his death, he was the best-selling and most expensive artist in the United States.
creative career
In 1949 Andrew Warhola graduated Institute of Technology Carnegie ( graphic design) with a Bachelor of Arts degree. In the same year he went to New York, where for the first years he was engaged in graphic design of commercial advertising - he mainly performed drawings of women's shoes for fashion magazines and the New York Times advertising supplement.
Already by 1950, success comes after the successful design of advertising for a shoe company.
Another work, subsequently recognized as the advertisement of the year, depicted a young man injecting a syringe into his forearm. Despite the scandalous plot, the customers - the owners of the radio station - were satisfied: the rating of their programs about youth problems increased.
By the way, the first lesson in self-promotion was given to him not by anyone, but by Salvador Dali. The master received an order for window dressing for a beauty salon in New York. As an element of decor, he decided to put a large iron bath in the window of the second floor, which the workers safely dropped down. The bath almost killed a random onlooker, Dali went to jail (albeit not for long), and the result of the scandal that erupted was that the Dali exhibition, which was held at that time in New York, sold well.
Very soon, Andy became the highest paid advertiser in New York, fulfilling orders for all fashion magazines, Vogue and Harper's Bazaar.
In 1956 he received an honorary prize from the Art Editors' Club.
Contribution to the development of pop art style
By 1968, Warhol was already a recognized master of pop art. His exhibitions were successfully held all over the world, there was no more popular artist in America - $ 60,000 was paid for one of his paintings at an auction. It was a record: none of his contemporaries received so much. However, no less than paintings or films, Warhol became famous for his scandalous interviews which he handed out left and right. “I didn’t want to be born. It was a mistake. It’s the same as I was kidnapped and sold into slavery,” he explained in an interview with Time magazine. “I was never touched own work. I do cheap writing and I like it ordinary people. In the spring, Andy traveled to Los Angeles for the opening of his big retrospective. The success was grandiose: crowded halls, crowds of students chanting: "We love Andy Warhol!" Photos in newspapers. In 1956 he received an honorary prize from the Art Editors' Club.
All of Warhol's art has turned into a systematized business process that produces added value... His pop art is a kind of "art outside of art", and if once there was "art for art's sake", then avant-garde and art, then just anti-art, now artificial art.
However, Warhol became notorious for the series pencil drawings, depicting dollar bills, (Fig.3,4)
Rice. 3
and painted Campbell soup cans. (Fig. 5) An exhibition of these works at New York's Stubble real sensation. Warhol applied paint to cans with brush strokes. However, by 1963 he began to use silk-screen printing, and since then most of his work has been done in this manner. Completely featureless, adapted to mass production, silkscreen prints were ideally suited for this purpose. Art critic Robert Hughes wrote: “Painting a tin can is not in itself a real art. But what remains true about Warhol is that he raised the level of soup production in a tin can to the level of creating paintings, giving it a mass-produced character - consumer art imitates the process , as well as the shape of consumer culture".
The silk-screen printing technique became a defining feature of Warhol's work. Monotonous repetition erases the pseudo-images offered by the surrounding world as exceptional: endless rows bottles of Coca-Cola (Fig. 6) are replaced by portraits of Marilyn Monroe, (Fig. 7) Liz Taylor, Elvis Presley.
One of Warhol's main occupations was, in his own words, "registration and cataloging of life around." He collected sensations, resulting in the posthumously published "Diary" and "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (from E to Kommersant and Back)". From the second book it is clear that Warhol actually did not go "ahead of the rest of the planet", but stood "on the side": lagging behind, late, descended from the "train of modernity." He did not create a "second reality". He panicked clearing the space around the first one, and then he reserved it and enlarged it. Hence the endless genre of portraiture in an era of overproduction, when one can be seen in a crowd only if it is magnified ten times. There are several statements in Warhol's book that define the understanding of the artist's work: “Business Art is the next step after Art. I started as a commercial artist, illustrator, and I want to finish as a business artist. After I made what is called "art" or whatever it is called, I got into business art. I wanted to be an Artistic Businessman or Business Artist."
And finally, in Philosophy, Warhol talks about the very creative process of creating the work: “I look at the canvas and think: “Well, here, in this corner, this paint looks like it’s in its place.” Then I look again and I say, "Here, in this corner, you need some blue, and I put blue paint there. And then I take green paint and add green color I step back and see if everything is correct. And if it's wrong - I take the paint, make a few more strokes of green in right place, and finally, if there is no doubt, I leave everything as it is.
A striking example of Warhol's work is the work "Flash" (1963-1968). This is a series of 11 prints presented as a narrative and accompanied by text taken from news items on the day of President Kennedy's assassination. This was not an illustration of the event. Warhol presented a series of images, the connection between which is not as important as their ability to convey the dramatic pathos of the event. In addition, Warhol's ability to choose photographs reinforces the importance of the media coverage. mass media, forming public opinion. Warhol used several different images of Kennedy. In addition, he used famous portraits- a stylistic device rarely found in his work. Flash prints show the author's ability to manipulate found images, changing their scale and clarity, using color to create a powerfully expressive effect of dissonant contrasts.
"Flash" is the least famous group works, marked by the author's serious passion for creating portraits and being among his best works. Others - "Marilyn Monroe" (1967), "Campbell's soup" I, II (1968-1969), "Flowers" (1970), "Electric Chaine" (1971), "Mao" (1972) - each of which contains 10 prints, based on key images created by Warhol at the beginning of his career.In contrast to his first narrative-driven works, these static images are free from any narrative context.Each of them conveys a strong image, enhanced by repetition.These works are retelling Warhol's previous appeals to his main themes of the 1960s: portraiture, consumption, decoration, death, these themes were often repeated in his work and became central to his work.
So, it was thanks to the work of Warhol that posters and advertisements began to use in a special way processed photo illustrations, bright psychedelic colors and repeatedly repeated images. Technical replication has largely given rise to an ironic attitude towards the very object of advertising, this cannot be denied. And here Warhol achieved his goal: he challenged the mass consumer society, which just supported Warhol. And finally, Warhol rid society of hypocrisy. He became the first person who publicly admitted that money is no less important component of the profession than creativity.
In 1963, Warhol opened a studio in downtown Manhattan, which he called "Factory". The studio was set up as a commercial enterprise, it produced up to 80 silkscreens per day, and produced about a thousand works a year. A whole team of workers worked on it and work was launched on the "mass production" of portraits of celebrities. The works of Andy Warhol have become a real symbol of commercial pop art and American artistic culture XX century.
Researchers especially note the significant contribution of Andy Warhol to cinema, journalism and photography. Andy devoted his whole life artistic photography, its processing and "mass" distribution. Art critics note his works such as The Andy Warhol Museum, Christie's, Picture Alliance, AP, Stern Magazine, Cinetext and many others.
In the 1970s Warhol purchased a Polaroid, began taking photographs on his own and then transferring the resulting photos to canvas.
This series includes a portrait of a mother (1974), a portrait of Picasso researcher John Richardson, a portrait of a gallery owner Leo Castelli (all silk-screened), as well as color engravings (based on photographs taken by himself) of Jane Fonda (1982) and Ingrid Bergman (1983). ).
In 1963, Warhol began making films, mostly silent films, and during the five years (from 1963 to 1968) during which Warhol was engaged in "filmmaking", he created several hundred films, including 472 three-minute screen tests or character portraits, dozens of short films and more than 150 films with a specific plot (60 of them were released), moving from black-and-white silent works to scripted color films, reminiscent of ordinary cinema in their duration.
His first film was called "Kiss" and lasted 50 minutes, then there were films "Dance", "Haircut", "Food", "Sleep".
In 1964, the two-hour silent film Batman Dracula and the eight-hour silent film Empire, "The 13 Most beautiful women" , "13 most handsome boys”,“ Drinking ”,“ Face ”,“ Lonely Cowboy ”, etc. In the mid-1960s, Warhol moved from black-and-white silent works to scripted color films (most often erotic content), reminiscent of ordinary cinema in duration. 1968 Warhol, together with Paul Morrissey, created the first feature film, Flesh.
On June 3, 1968, the mentally unstable feminist writer Valerie Solanas, who starred in his film I Am the Man, seriously wounded him with a pistol shot. After the assassination attempt, Warhol began to constantly visit the nearest church, confess and take communion. Valerie Solanas received three years in prison and compulsory treatment in psychiatric hospital.
Throughout his life, Warhol collected paintings, furniture, jewelry, arts and crafts. Fed up with pop culture, in the 1980s. he began to buy antiques and decorate his home with masterpieces of classical art.
At Sotheby's, his motley collection was sold for $25.3 million. By the way, there was not a single picture of Warhol himself in it, with the exception of a small portrait of Mao Zedong: Andy did not keep his works at home. An obituary in The New York Times began with the words: "Warhol's finest work is Warhol himself."
Andy Warhol died in New York on February 22, 1987. The brothers moved the body of the artist to Pittsburgh, where they buried him on the territory catholic church Byzantine rite (Church of the Holy Spirit).
His fortune, estimated at $ 100 million, the artist bequeathed to his foundation to help art organizations.
pop art warhol creativity
Exhibitions in Moscow
Warhol Week in Moscow / State. image museum. arts them. A. S. Pushkin - Andy Warhol and Russian Pop Art in the Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val / Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val / September 2005
Pre-auction exhibition house Phillips de Pury & Co. As part of the exhibition, the painting "Camouflage" is shown / Gallery "Regina" / February 10-12, 2008
Andy Warhol "Living Portraits" (Exhibition dedicated to the 80th anniversary of Andy Warhol) / Moscow Museum contemporary art/ December 17, 2008 -- February 8, 2009
(Eng. Andy Warhol, August 6, 1928 - February 22, 1987, USA) - founder of Interview magazine, creator and producer of the rock band The Velvet Underground & Nico, artist, photographer, director, journalist, collector. A cult figure in the history of the pop art movement and contemporary art.
Biography and career
Childhood and early years
Andy Warhol (birth name - Andrey Warhola) was born on August 6, 1928 in Pittsburgh, USA. He grew up in a religious family of Slovak émigrés Julia Zawatski and Andrei Warhola Sr., along with two brothers, John and Paul. When Andy was 9 years old, his parents gave him a camera. Subsequently, he recalled that "the shooting process delighted him."
At the age of six, Andy Warhol attended free preparatory classes in art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology.
When Andy was in third grade, he contracted scarlet fever, which led to chorea, a disorder of the nervous system that causes involuntary movements of the limbs. He developed a fear of doctors and hospitals. For months the boy did not visit school lessons and subsequently became an outcast in the class. During periods when Andy was bedridden, he painted, collected photographs of movie stars, made collages from newspaper clippings.
In 1942, Andy Warhol's father died of peritonitis.
In 1945, Andy graduated from the Shenley School and entered the Carnegie Institute of Technology. Andrei Varhola Sr. saved money for education during his lifetime.
Warhol graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1949 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. In the same year he moved to New York.
Carier start
In 1949, Andy Warhol designed the windows of Joseph Horn's department store. At the end of the same year, he began working as an illustrator in magazines,. He developed advertising campaigns for various, design postcards, covers for record company Columbia Records.
In the early 1950s Andy Warhol earned about $100,000 a year. In 1952, he moved his mother from Pittsburgh to New York. That same year, Warhol received his first Graphic Arts Award from the Art Editors Club. In 1952 there was a small exhibition of Andy Warhol. It included fifteen drawings for the works of Truman Capote, which became bestsellers.
In 1959, Andy Warhol presented his work at the Solomon Guggenheim Museum.
In 1959 - 1963 Andy Warhol rented the top floor of a building located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Here he worked, organized exhibitions and parties.
In 1961, Andy Warhol began to paint and create pop art illustrations.
The heyday of creativity
In the 1960s Andy Warhol directed over 300 experimental films. They were characterized by the absence of a plot and were successful only in narrow circles. Many films were erotic, some reproduced a certain action from a person's life. The most famous paintings were considered "Kinoproby", "Vinyl", "Chelsea Girls".
“I started making my films with one actor. For several hours he smoked, sat, ate, slept. I did this because I realized that the audience goes to the cinema mainly to see their favorite actor. So I gave them that opportunity."
In 1961, Andy Warhol began producing Green Coca-Cola Bottles and Campbell Soup Cans. He used the technique of silk-screen printing, with the help of which it was possible to endlessly recreate the same images. A large number of images of Coca-Cola bottles Andy Warhol explained as follows: "everyone consumes this product - the president of the country, Elizabeth Taylor and the beggar who knows that his Coca-Cola is no worse than the president's." The monotone repetition has become feature his work - photographs and drawings depicting Coca-Cola bottles were replaced by portraits, Elizabeth Taylor, Elvis Presley, Audrey Hepburn and others. Andy Warhol's works received world fame as an art object of the era of mass consumption.
“Painting a tin can is not in itself a real art. But what remains authentic about Warhol is that he raised the level of production of soup in a tin can to the level of creating paintings, giving them a mass character. In his works, he reproduced the image of consumer culture.
Robert Hughes, art historian, artist
In 1962, after the death of Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol created the famous Marilyn Diptych. Using screen printing, he applied to canvas 50 identical images of the actress from a 1953 photograph taken on the set of the film Niagara. The left side of the diptych was a canvas with 25 colorful images of Marilyn Monroe, the right side imitated blurred negatives. There was an opinion that Andy Warhol associated the contrasting parts of the canvas with the life and death of the actress.
In 1963, Andy Warhol bought a building in Manhattan, equipped it as a studio and named it "Factory". Here he created about 2000 paintings. Many extraordinary people gathered at the Factory, such as Edie Sedgwick, Holly Woodlaw, Viva, Gerard Malanga, who helped him in creating new projects.
In 1963, Andy Warhol presented the Five Deaths series of works, united by the theme of death and catastrophes.
In 1965, Andy Warhol showed his work at exhibitions in New York, Paris, Milan, Turin, Essen, Stockholm, Buenos Aires and Toronto.
In 1966, Andy Warhol created the rock band The Velvet Underground & Nico.
Assassination attempt on Andy Warhol
On June 3, 1968, there was an assassination attempt on Andy Warhol. Valerie Solans, a feminist who worked at the Factory, shot him 3 times in the stomach. After that, she approached the traffic controller on the street, held out a gun and said: “The police are looking for me. I shot Andy Warhol. He had too much control over my life." Warhol did not testify against her. For "premeditated assault with intent to cause damage", the court sentenced Valerie Solanas to 3 years in prison and compulsory treatment in a psychiatric hospital. Andy Warhol had damaged all the internal organs, until the end of his life he was forced to wear a bandage. Subsequently, he took a picture in which the artist showed the scars from the operation.
Interview Magazine
In 1969, Andy Warhol founded the magazine . Initially, the publication was called inter / View, which in translation meant "between opinions." The magazine was completely dedicated to the theme of cinema. The publication published interviews with movie stars and directors, as well as reviews and reviews.
In the mid 1970s. the magazine's area of interest also included materials on fashion, art, music, television and other aspects of pop culture. Interview began to regularly appear texts about, models and 
other celebrities of the fashion industry. The peculiarity of the publication was that it was not journalists who interviewed the stars, but other stars. Anjelica Huston spoke with Mae West, Bianca Jagger - with, Michael Jackson interviewed the leader of the Neptunes group, Andy Warhol - with Truman Capote. The idea of "creating an atmosphere of relaxed heart-to-heart conversation" belonged to the founder of the publication, it became calling card magazine. Interview published pictures created by Francesco Scavullo, etc.
Other Andy Warhol projects
In 1969, Andy Warhol created the film Flesh, and in 1970 he released the film Garbage. In both works there was an element of parody of commercial cinema. Between 1966 and 1968, Andy Warhol made several films featuring the Velvet Underground. He also produced several albums of this group and designed the cover of the first disc.
In the 1970s Andy Warhol began to paint portraits to order. He created images of John Lennon, Michael Jackson, Mohammed Ali, Jane Fonda, Marlon Brando, Grace Jones, Mao Zedong, Liza Minnelli and others. Andy Warhol filmed the customer on a Polaroid, selected best photo, enlarged it and transferred the image to the canvas using the silkscreen method. After that, he painted the canvas with oil paints.
In 1973, Andy Warhol began to collect the attributes of his Everyday life- letters, newspapers, souvenirs, clothes, postcards, etc. - and put them in boxes. He called these collections "Time Capsules".
By 1987 there were 610 boxes. The Time Capsule is currently in the Andy Warhol Museum.
In 1975, Andy Warhol published The Philosophy of Andy Warhol. From A to B and vice versa.
In 1979, Andy Warhol painted a BMW car (model M1).
“I tried to draw what speed looks like. When the car moves, all the lines and colors are smeared."
In the mid 1980s. MTV aired the Andy Warhol shows - Andy Warhol Television and Fifteen Minutes with Andy Warhol.
On February 22, 1987, Andy Warhol died in his sleep at Cornwell Medical Center in Manhattan. where he underwent surgery to remove his gallbladder. His brothers Paul and John moved the body to Pittsburgh and buried it on the grounds of the Catholic Church of the Holy Spirit. At the memorial service at the Cathedral of St. Patrick in New York was attended by about two thousand people.
Andy Warhol's fortune was estimated at 600 million dollars.
In 1989, after Andy Warhol's death, The Diaries were published, the artist's personal notes that he had kept since the 1960s.
Personal life of Andy Warhol
Despite the fact that Andy Warhol was a public figure, a key figure in the second half of the 20th century, the details of his personal life are unknown. He considered the closest person to his mother, with whom he lived in the same apartment in Manhattan for 20 years. He never openly declared his homosexuality, but contributed to the development of the gay theme of American cinema. According to Andy Warhol's diary entries, he had no close relationship with either a woman or a man. It is known about his attraction to Truman Capote, to whom he wrote love letters.
“Love in fantasy is much better than love in reality. The most exciting thing is if you fall in love with someone and never have sex with him. The craziest attraction is between two opposites that never meet.”
In life, Andy Warhol used makeup, dyed his hair straw-colored, wore wigs with black strands. Being the owner of an androgynous appearance, he was sometimes photographed in women's dresses. Andy Warhol had platonic romances with Edie Sedgwick and model Nico.
Films about Andy Warhol
- 1995. "I shot Andy Warhol." The film is based on real event Valerie Solance's assassination attempt on Andy Warhol.
- 2001. "Andy Warhol: The Finished Painting". Documentary about the work of Andy Warhol.
- 2001. "Absolute Warhola". A documentary about the life of Andy Warhol and his family.
- 2006. "I Seduced Andy Warhol" ("Factory Girl"). The picture shows the relationship between Andy Warhol and his muse Edie Sedgwick.
Andy Warhol Museum
In 1994, a seven-story museum dedicated to the life and work of Andy Warhol opened in Pittsburgh. The galleries feature about 900 paintings, 77 sculptures, 4000 photographs, 4350 films. The originals of his diary entries, wigs, etc. are also stored here. different countries peace.
The commercial value of Andy Warhol
In 1995, a series of images of "Campbell's Soup Can" was sold to the New York Museum of Modern Art for $14,500.
In 2004, Marilyn's Diptych was ranked third on the 500 outstanding works contemporary art" according to The Guardian newspaper. The painting is currently on display at the Tate Gallery in Liverpool.
In 2006, 1,010 works by Andy Warhol were sold at auction for a total of $199 million.
In 2008, the Eight Elvis canvas was sold for $100 million.
In 2010 year total amount from sales of works by Andy Warhol exceeded $ 300 million.
In 2011, Campbell's Can of Soup, one of Warhol's first paintings, was sold at auction. auction house Christie's for $10 million.
In 2012, Andy Warhol sold $380 million at auction.
For 2013 Andy Warhol's works are the best-selling. The second place is occupied by paintings by Pablo Picasso.
Interpretation of pop art images of Andy Warhol in the 21st century
In 2011, The Campbell Soup Company released a limited collection canned soups Campbell's. Its release was timed to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the appearance of the eponymous series of paintings by Andy Warhol. In honor of this date, four packaging options were created. All banks were painted in red, blue, blue, green, yellow colors- these are the tones that Andy Warhol used in his works. The products were presented in the US network of Target stores at a price of 75 cents per can.
The packaging was decorated with images of Warhol's muses and quotes. The cost of beauty products ranged from $35 to $75.
In 2012, the December issue of Dujour published a photo shoot dedicated to Warhol and his muses. tried on the images of Edie Sedgwick, Nico, Candy Darling and Andy himself.
Andy Warhol interview for Glenn O'Brien (June 1977, published in Interview magazine)
G.O.: What was your first work of art?
E.W.: I cut paper dolls.
G.O.: How old were you?
E.W.: Seven.
G.O.:Did you get good grades in art school?
E.W.: Yes, and the teachers loved me.
G.O.:Did they say that you have a natural talent?
E.W.: Something like that. Unnatural talent.
G.O.: Did you do art at school?
E.W.: I was often sick, so in order to catch up with the program I went to summer school. I had one art class.
G.O.: How did you have fun when you were a teenager?
E.W.: I didn't try to have fun. I only went to a Frank Sinatra concert once.
G.O.: How did you decide to become an artist and move to New York?
E.W.: I got into Carnegie Tech. Philip Pearlstein was going to New York for the holidays and I went with him. I took my bag and we got on the bus. We showed the portfolio around New York and hoped to get a job. Tina Fredericks, who worked for Glamor magazine, said she would hire me as soon as I graduated from high school. This was my first job.
Official site: www.warholstars.org
Official site in Russian: www.andy-warhol.ru
Museum website: www.warhol.org
Foundation website: www.warholfoundation.org
August 6th would have been Andy Warhol's 88th birthday. Over the course of 37 years of his career, the son of Rusyn migrants from Slovakia, Andriy Vargola, has turned art into a part of the consumption system, showing that any thing can become an art object.
The picture was created in hot pursuit - after the death of the actress. Warhol brought together two canvases - five dozen carelessly painted portraits taken from a photo of Monroe on the set of the film "Niagara", and another one of the same, only graphic, in black and white. Made using the silkscreen technique, "Marilyn" has become one of the main tools for turning the actress into a posthumous cult. Nine years ago, the painting was bought for $ 80 million, at the beginning of the decade, the painting appeared in British gallery Tate.
In the same year that the Marilyn Diptych was made, Warhol took up his favorite food - Campbell's soups. He began to record cans of soup in large quantities, explaining that he works with what he personally likes. Most famous variant, a large can with a can opener, went at auction for $ 24 million - this happened after the death of the artist. Surely Andy would be very surprised at such a price, since he himself sold paintings with cans of $ 100.
On June 3, 1968, Valerie Solanas, who previously worked with Warhol as an actress, appeared at his "Factory" and fired three bullets into his stomach. survived clinical death Andy, however, did not testify against Solanas. Very afraid of pain, illness and death, and at the same time very interested in these topics, after the assassination attempt, the artist almost completely focused on them. "Pistol", created a decade and a half after the incident, shows a copy of the weapon from which Solanas fired. Perhaps Warhol was trying to face fear in this way.
Warhol in the second half of the 60s became the producer of the Velvet Underground. Producing consisted of PR - promotion of information about the group among the right people and media. Warhol made the main contribution to the Lou Reed team by drawing the cover debut album. Banana, Andy's signature, three words - Peel slowly and see - the album sleeve looked great. At first, in the first pressing of the disc, the Velvet Underground were conceptual with might and main, offering to pick the same yellow banana glued on the envelope in order to find another one under it - pink and peeled.
Most of all Andy, according to him own confession loved money. It would be strange if Warhol did not transfer this love to the canvas. In the process of creating the picture, Andy used to print his drawings of banknotes on tracing paper, under which he placed one and two dollar bills. 47 years later, in 2009, "200 one-dollar bills" became a lot at Sotheby's auction in New York. The auctioneers planned that the painting would go for a maximum of $ 12 million, but were, to put it mildly, pleasantly surprised when demand dispersed the price of the lot to $ 43.7 million. "Art is a profit if it sells well," Andy argued.He was right, it seems.
Made 15 years before the death of the King of Rock and Roll, the painting is the most expensive work of the artist. In 2008, it was put up for auction by the Italian collector Annibale Berlinghieri and received $ 100 million, so the face of Elvis, replicated and painted in silver, became the embodiment of Andy's dream, who wanted the maximum price for his work.
Andy Warhol, one of the founders of pop art, has successfully turned his name into a brand. A multifaceted and versatile personality, he reliably inscribed himself in the history of the development of culture in the second half of the 20th century. What brought him such a resounding success?
Childhood
On August 6, 1928, a fourth child was born in a family of immigrants from Czechoslovakia Varhola, they named him Andrei. Andy Warhol is the pseudonym of Andrey Varhola. At the time of his birth, the family had already lived in the city of Pittsburgh for several years, so he rightfully took an American name for himself. The family had nothing to do with creative environment. His father worked all his life in a coal mine, and his mother was a housewife.
In 3rd grade little Andrew was ill with Sydenham's chorea. This disease causes involuntary jerky body movements. As a result whole year the boy had to spend at home. It was during this period that he became interested in drawing in order to somehow distract himself from the painful state. The plot did not have to hiccup for a long time, he simply drew what was before his eyes: light bulbs, empty packs of cigarettes. Then he first began to make collages from newspaper clippings.
The beginning of the way
Young and ambitious Andy Warhol creative way decided to start by enrolling at the Carnegie Mellon Institute of Technology. He easily passed all the exams and began to study commercial illustration and graphic drawing. He turned out to be the best student on the course, but at the same time he could not find contact with teachers and classmates.
A young and talented American artist easily found work in New York. His first position was a window dresser. During these years he painted posters, Greeting Cards, was engaged in the decor of stands. At first great success did not have.
One friend advised him: if you want to be rich, draw money. Andy took this advice literally, and began to draw one-dollar bills. At the same time, discount coupons and the now-legendary images of Campbell's soup were completed. It was the first success. He was quickly noticed and offered cooperation with leading glossy publications. Andy worked as an illustrator for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar magazines.
stairs up
One of the most successful people of his time, Andy Warhol, whose biography and work inspires today, began his journey with advertising. The first successful project was advertising shoes "I. Miller. It was a real success, contracts fell like rain, and the amounts of fees were constantly growing.
Already in 1952, his first exhibition took place. She brought her author even greater success. Andy was accepted into the Art Editors Club. During the same period, he creates his form style based on screen printing. By this time, his earnings had already exceeded $ 100,000 a year, and he was recognized as one of the most successful people of our time. One of the most expensive commissions is the design of a Coca-Cola can.
Templates, templates, templates...
1962 was a landmark year. At this time, the artist's passion for stencils intensifies. He took newspaper clippings or photographs as a basis, the original version was multiplied into many copies. Each piece was painted differently. The American artist was a slice of realism. The selection of colors was based on their compatibility.
At one time, the artist was strongly fascinated by tragic photographs. He took plots of murders, catastrophes, fires. Numerous repetitions enhanced the impression, and unnatural colors only helped to focus on the plot.
Andy Warhol continues to work in this technique further. Photo of Marilyn Monroe for a long time inspired the artist. Marilyn in neon colors has become a kind of icon of pop art.
Factory
Andy Warhol brought the philosophy of technology to art. He said more than once that he would like to become a machine. Thinking the same and looking the same, like machines - that's what humanity must come to. Based on this idea, a creative workshop was created, which he called "Factory". To create the necessary surroundings, the entire room was covered with aluminum.
"Factory" Warhol began to gather like-minded people around him. The working team was replenished with several assistants. Although general direction was uniform, the assistants had some freedom. They independently selected images for new stencils and learned from the meter how to combine colors.
Producer
All the same "Factory" became the place where cinema was born. Andy became almost the only known director of cinema in the underground style. His first works introduced the viewer into a hypnotic state. These are the paintings "Sleep" and "Empire". In the first, throughout the entire tape, just a sleeping person, the second offers a contemplation of the Empire State Building at night. The picture lasts several hours, while without any musical accompaniment.
In the future, a movie appears with a plot that is mostly erotic character. One of the first feature films - "Garbage". The very process of work and the plot of the picture is a parody and a mockery of commercial cinema.
Since 1966, Warhol has been working with the Velvet Underground. He makes films and produces several albums. Andy personally designs their first album. The cover features a graphic image of a banana on a clean background. Now it is one of the most recognizable works artist.
Magazine
This person is not only an artist, director and producer of a musical group, he is also a magazine publisher. Andy Warhol created the magazine Interview. the main objective publications - to carry modern culture to the masses.
The pages of the magazine published interviews of bright creative people of their time: musicians, artists, actors, directors. He was one of the first to open the veil of secrecy over the lives of famous personalities. Glory, sex outrageousness and delicacy perfectly coexist here. But the circle of people is not limited to pop art and the underground, the publication does not adhere to a certain style and works in all directions.
The magazine is still alive and is already published in several countries. He came to Russia in 2011. The new generation diligently observes the traditions laid down by the founder.
assassination attempt
On July 3, 1968, Warhol, as always, was working in his workshop. One of his actresses - - came in and fired three shots into the artist's stomach. After that, she calmly went out into the street, and confessed to the first patrol officer of her deed. However, she did not feel remorse, and made the attempt quite deliberately. Andy suffered clinical death, but as a result of a long and complicated operation, doctors managed to save his life. He flatly refused to give accusatory evidence, complacently forgiving his model. Solanas escaped with three years in prison and compulsory treatment.
Some believe that Valerie was an ardent feminist. But she herself claims that she was trying in this way to attract his attention to herself. Talking to him was like talking to furniture, she argued. The version with the unfortunate lover seems more plausible, all things considered.
Having been on the threshold of the worlds, the artist becomes more pious, and begins to attend church regularly. The theme of violent death is often seen in the works of this time.
Personal life
Andy Warhol, whose biography was carefully concealed, still failed to completely free himself from public discussion of his personal life.
He was constantly credited with a relationship with Edie Sedgwick. He met this sweet girl with a charming smile in 1995. A thin, fragile 17-year-old girl delighted the already eminent artist. He repeatedly called her his muse.
It is still not clear whether their romantic feelings connected or not, but one thing is a fact. They appeared everywhere together, as if the twins dressed the same. To please Andy, the girl even cut her luxurious hair and dyed it platinum blonde. But the idyll did not turn out to be eternal, for unknown reasons they quarreled right in the restaurant, they were never seen together again.
Many researchers of Andy Warhol's personal life claim that he was gay, and there simply could not be a relationship with Edie. Much about life and work can be learned from the diaries kept by Andy Warhol: biography, photos, hangouts and creative process. Recordings were kept for 10 years, and after the death of the artist were published.
Artist, director, producer, publisher - Andy Warhol has been noted in almost all directions and left a bright neon brushstroke in the history of contemporary art. His work continues to inspire the younger generation and he raised many followers on his own at the "Factory" of art. An unusual personality with an unusual fate, a prime example a man who independently achieved everything he dreamed of.
